Since early 2024, he has been running the Center for Journalism and Ethics at Columbia University.
So, it would not be surprising to see the university surrender to Trump from both journalism and ethics perspectives.
I have never run a university, but I run a newsroom. For 13 years (until 2012 I moved to New York City and became the public editor of the New York Times), I was the editor-in-chief of my hometown local newspaper, Buffalo News. I started there as a summer intern. As an editor, I have made a lot of decisions. The money stopped at my desk.
It's not a complete similarity to the situation in Colombia, but I've been thinking about what my options are if the biggest and most powerful advertisers of paper, important to our financial well-being, get the wind of research they didn't like. Say something that reveals something negative about their business.
Assume that the advertiser threatened to withdraw all ads unless we remove the story. In fact, assume they wanted a promise of active coverage – perhaps a series about their CEO's fawed profiles and good things the company was doing in the community.
Let's make that even more complicated. Let's say my boss, the owner of the paper, was on the advertiser's side, or at least he was inclined to look at their perspective.
What are my options as an editor?
There's really only one: Hold fast. To insist that if we are a legal newspaper, we must be brave and not be bullied ourselves. And refusing to draw a story. Make sure it's bulletproof (all facts that have been discontinued) and proceed with a plan to make it public.
What will happen?
It's difficult to say. Perhaps the advertisers will blink. Maybe the owner will fire me. Maybe I had to resign.
The point of this incomplete analogy is that simply being bullied or threatened by compliance is never the right answer.
And it is especially important that strong institutions stand up, set examples, and isolate those who are less resourced or more vulnerable.
Columbia has a huge donation of nearly $15 billion. They may have endured the withdrawal of federal funds.
Columbia's leadership may have chosen to say, “Look at you in court,” rather than “Yes, Sir.”
Some principles are central to the institution's objectives, so it should be impossible to betray them. You don't kill effective stories under pressure. Because, however, the flawedness of journalism is about finding and telling the truth.
And universities, short for academic freedom, freedom of thinking, speech and expression, including the right to peacefully protest, cannot succumb to demands that undermine those principles.
Sadly, that's what Columbia did, putting the entire academic department under very unusual supervision and even empowering campus police, which were strengthened to detain, remove or arrest students for a variety of supposed crimes.
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This action stains a great university that may have recovered from the financial threat, but may not recover from this surrender.
Of course, Colombia needs to oppose anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination. But that's not really the case – certainly not Completely – What's at the heart of Trump's movement.
“It's all about blackmail,” my guardian colleague, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, wrote this weekend, “not just in Columbia, but in every other university in America.”
Colombia's surrender reflects the surrender of many institutions over the past few weeks. Under pressure, a major law firm (Paul, Weiss) has signed a contract with the White House to donate $40 million in legal work to enable Trump's cause. ABC News has settled a honour-loss lawsuit that could possibly win. And newspaper owners, including Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, have worked with Trump in many ways that harm its credibility and mission.
However, some organizations have decided not to be caves, but to remain faithful to the longstanding principles they have stated.
The Associated Press is suing after the Trump administration severely restricted access to journalists and punished an editorial decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” in their first reference to their stories, rather than “the Gulf of America.” Another large law firm, Perkins Koy, is fighting in court after Trump's executive order stripped his lawyers of security clearance and denied access to government buildings.
Take this to the bank: It will not satisfy Trump's demands. The goal post is always moved and then moved again.
With its enormous donations and a sea of rich alumni – some of it certainly sympathizes – Colombia had other options. Small universities may not.
Institutions with resources must resist bullying not only for their own souke, but also to protect others who find it much more difficult. And for another reason, at a very dangerous time in the US and the world, that's right.
